Sears, CSC, in battle over contract termination

In what’s shaping up as a classic “bad faith” case, retailer Sears Roebuck and IT provider Computer Services Corp. are battling over a $1.6 billion computer services contract.  Sears has announced that it is canceling the contract “for cause,” noting various defalcations by CSC.  CSC claims that Sears’s real reason is that it wants to avoid the millions of dollars in early termination fees that the contract provides for, and is hoping to ditch the contract before its upcoming merger with K-Mart.